


It's A Mess

by Gabri



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: AU, Character Death, Gen, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabri/pseuds/Gabri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiccup, Toothless, Astrid, Stoick. The Kill Ring with a different ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's A Mess

She looks so different without a weapon in her hand. Smaller, less powerful. But then there’s something to be said about hiding behind weapons, and a world of difference in letting letting them go.

Here she is, putting his life in lists, as serene as any battle operation she’s formulated in her head. “Your tribe,” she starts out, her bare hands folded in her lap. “Your father…”

They’re both filthy, covered in upturned earth from the neck down. Hiccup almost wants to apologize, but he’s not really sorry and he knows she doesn't care. His palms are bleeding; there’s splinters in them from the wooden handles. Shovels, barely broken in. He thought maybe years of calloused fingers might dull the pain, but it’s there in full force.

He finds he doesn't really care about that, either.

"…your best friend." Astrid finishes. Of course that’s where it ends. At Toothless. It’s always been about Toothless, even before they met. Even before Hiccup knew him, every little inch of him, from the pattern of oval scales in fractals under his throat, the places he liked to be scratched, the exact degree of the heat of his breast where Hiccup used to sleep, pressed up against his heart like a dragon’s child.

He wishes he were a dragon’s child. He wishes he had wings, and scales, and Toothless could be his father, and the two of them could never touch the ground again. Or find themselves shot out of the sky by foolish human children again. Or held down by angry, Viking men.

He can’t stop staring at the hole they made, even after they had filled it in. It’s soil met for Viking blood, not even Viking bodies. They burn those, of course. But Astrid said burning would cause too much notice, and they were breaking enough rules already. Someone would interfere. Hiccup didn't think he could bear it if they took this away from him, too.

He deserved better than this. Better than a hole in the ground in the dead of night, when his father was asleep and Hiccup was wide awake, almost wishing he could hear that man’s footsteps behind him, demanding, furious. He thinks he knows what he’d say to him, now. Regardless of the nest, which they might just find anyway. Regardless of the temptation to spill that secret, the one Astrid swore to protect, and watch them all sail victoriously to their own deaths.

But he won’t tell. He won’t say anything, except the few choice words he can already hear, clear and calm in his mind. In the morning he’ll find the dragon cages, fit them with keys. He’ll climb on the Nightmare’s back and leave nothing but their open chains behind. He’s cold all over as he imagines it - pointing towards the ground, the dirt packed tight. _That’s me_ , he’ll say. _That’s me buried under there. That’s me you hit with your axe. I begged you to take it out on me and you thought you didn't but you did. You killed me. You’re not my father. You’re not._

"It’s a mess." Astrid whispers, and Hiccup doesn't cry because there’s nothing left to cry out. Just the blood on his hands and the wound on his throat. The one she can’t see because it fell on black scales instead of freckled skin. The one he couldn't stitch up, not with a thousand blueprints or a thousand needles.

You killed me. Him. You killed him.

"You’ve lost everything." she says.


End file.
